Liberals still hate Reagan with an unholy passion. He was a third rate unqualified movie actor whose highest achievement to date was "Bedtime with Bonzo", he was going to start World War III, etc.

I watched the debate between Reagan and Carter in 1980 and recall how Reagan cleaned Carter's clock. Reagan was self assured, confident, comfortable, and humorous. Carter looked like a deer caught in the headlights.

badbug said Yeah for sure Reagan caused the Berlin Wall to fall. Not 40 plus years of a foreign policy of containment, but just one Reagan speech.

Let me guess, Reagan brought down the Berlin wall, but Obama doesn't deserve the credit for killing Bin Laden and it's not George Bush's fault for 9/11?

Well, at least you can blame the Iraq and Afghanistan wars on Bush, justified with deliberately false intelligence. And the failed response to Katrina, and the Bush/Republican monetary policies that brought about the Great Recession.

As for the Berlin Wall, what actually brought it down was the faltering Soviet economy, and the permissive response of Mikhail Gorbachev to a people's movement for more political freedom within the Soviet Union. I remember intelligence briefings we were getting in the Army in the early 1980s that predicted exactly this scenario, and within these general time lines.

A neo-con article of faith is that Reagan precipitated the Soviet economic decline by starting an arms race with them. But we were getting these projections as early as early 1981, when Reagan had just entered the White House a few months before. The Reagan Administration team was unmatched as artists of self-promotion, and many of the myths they planted have grown with time to be accepted facts.

badbug said Yeah for sure Reagan caused the Berlin Wall to fall. Not 40 plus years of a foreign policy of containment, but just one Reagan speech.

Let me guess, Reagan brought down the Berlin wall, but Obama doesn't deserve the credit for killing Bin Laden and it's not George Bush's fault for 9/11?

Well, at least you can blame the Iraq and Afghanistan wars on Bush, justified with deliberately false intelligence. And the failed response to Katrina, and the Bush/Republican monetary policies that brought about the Great Recession.

As for the Berlin Wall, what actually brought it down was the faltering Soviet economy, and the permissive response of Mikhail Gorbachev to a people's movement for more political freedom within the Soviet Union. I remember intelligence briefings we were getting in the Army in the early 1980s that predicted exactly this scenario, and within these general time lines.

A neo-con article of faith is that Reagan precipitated the Soviet economic decline by starting an arms race with them. But we were getting these projections as early as early 1981, when Reagan had just entered the White House a few months before. The Reagan Administration team was unmatched as artists of self-promotion, and many of the myths they planted have grown with time to be accepted facts.